VGC Updates – Video Game Canon

Zelda: Ocarina of Time Takes the Top Spot in Indy100’s “The Best 100 Video Games of All Time”

We’re just three months into 2025 and we have yet another new Best Games list to dissect and debate.

This time it comes from Indy100, a Digg-like viral news portal from British newspaper The Independent. “The Best 100 Video Games of All Time” sounds a little backwards to my American ears, but it’s business as usual at the top of the list as our old friend The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time took the #1 spot.

The list actually feels pretty traditional as you move through the rest of the Top 25. There’s Super Mario World at #3 and Half-Life 2 at #4 and The Last of Us at #9. Mainstays like Mass Effect 2 (#12), The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (#15), and Elden Ring (#17) can also be found in this stretch of the list.

But after that, more than 10% of the list is devoted to games that have never appeared on a Best Games list before. 2025’s Monster Hunter Wilds (#73) is the newest game on the list, but Indy100 also made room for 2024’s Astro Bot (#68), and 2023’s Alan Wake II (#77) and Spider-Man 2 (#72).

This batch of never-before-seen games also includes old favorites like 2000’s Spyro: Year of the Dragon (#81) and the incredibly-underrated Klonoa 2: Lunatea’s Veil (#69) from 2001. Other new additions include God of War: Ragnarok (#16), Horizon: Forbidden West (#44), Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart (#95), Devil May Cry 5 (#87), and Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception (#88).

While a lot of new additions and old favorites dot the Indy100 list, the most unique part of “The Best 100 Video Games of All Time” might be the one game that didn’t make the cut… there’s no version of Tetris anywhere on the list. It’s a bit surprising, but it does happen.

The games from Indy100’s “The Best 100 Video Games of All Time” will be added to the Video Game Canon as part of the 2026 update.

World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Finalists for Class of 2025 Include Angry Birds, GoldenEye 007, Quake, and More

I can’t say that I blame them, but it sure looks the World Video Game Hall of Fame would like it to be 2023 again. The finalists for the Hall of Fame’s Class of 2025 were announced earlier this week, and six games that failed to make the cut from 2023 are getting another try this year. That crop of titles includes Ensemble’s Age of Empires, Rovio’s Angry Birds, Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Rare’s GoldenEye 007, Visual Concepts’s NBA 2K, and id Software’s Quake.

They’ll be competing against two other returning finalists, Konami’s Frogger (which was last up as a finalist in 2020) and the Mattel Football handheld .

Unorthodox handhelds are something of the theme this year, as Bandai’s Tamagotchi digital pet is a finalist (for the first time) as well. It’s joined by a trio of other first-timers including Midway’s Defender, Incredible Technologies’s Golden Tee Golf, and Natsume’s Harvest Moon.

“This year’s finalists span the decades and range from arcade classics to one of the most popular mobile games of all time,” said Jon-Paul Dyson, the Director of The Strong’s International Center for the History of Electronic Games. “All of these games have enormously influenced pop culture or the game industry itself. Frogger was popular in the arcades of the 1980s, but an iconic Seinfeld scene in 1998 made it unforgettable. The brilliant coding of the first-person shooter Quake enabled unforgettable multiplayer matches that have mesmerized players and influenced many games that followed. Then there’s Tamagotchi, which bridges the gap between video games and digital toys, changing the way we think about games.”

The Hall of Fame’s International Selection Advisory Committee, a body made up of journalists and scholars from around the world, is currently debating which of these games to induct as part of the Class of 2025, and you can help. A Player’s Choice Ballot will be available until March 13th and the three games that receive the most votes will be submitted alongside the other ballots from the committee members.

The World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2025 will be announced during a ceremony at The Strong on Thursday, May 8, at 10:30 AM. If you’d like to study up on this classic games, the curators at the Strong Museum have put together a cheat sheet describing each of games. You can find it after the break.

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Hades Debuts in the Top 10 in the 2025 Update to the Video Game Canon’s Top 1000

It took a little extra time, but the Version 8.0 update to the Video Game Canon is finally here.

With the addition of a handful of new lists since the last update, the Video Game Canon’s critical consensus is now aggregated using data from 80 Best Video Games of All Time lists published across the last four decades. That includes one list published just a few weeks ago (Rolling Stone’s “The 50 Greatest Video Games of All Time“) and one from 2024 Dexerto’s “These Are the 100 Best Games of All Time“).

Data from two older lists (The Sydney Morning Herald’s “Top 50 Video Games of All Time” from 2002 and Gamereactor’s “Best Ever: Games” from 2022) were also added to the dataset, as was the annual update to the “Shacknews Hall of Fame“.

If you’re new to the Video Game Canon, here’s a quick primer on how it all works.

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“These Are the 100 Best Games of All Time” According to the Editors of Dexerto and Elden Ring is #1

With Rolling Stone’s new Best Games list in the books, I was able to look back at a list I missed from 2024… Dexerto’s “These Are the 100 Best Games of All Time“.

Published in August, it’s a very list as it skews very modern, including the selection of From Software’s Elden Ring at #1. In fact, the remainder of the Top 5 (including Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption 2 at #2, Atlus’s Persona 5 at #3, Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us at #4, and Valve’s Portal 2 at #5) is comprised of games from the last 15 years.

This pattern continues the further down the list you go, including with all the games that Dexerto picked that have yet to appear on any Best Games lists. These first-time selections include Baldur’s Gate 3 (#8), Cyberpunk 2077 (#33), Sea of Thieves (#70), Doom Eternal (#81), 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim (#84), Diablo IV (#86), and WWE Smackdown! Here Comes the Pain (#100).

The rest of Dexerto’s “These Are the 100 Best Games of All Time” is certainly worth a look and the list will be added to the Video Game Canon as part of the next update.

Rolling Stone Picks Zelda: Breath of the Wild as #1 in “The 50 Greatest Video Games of All Time”

Rolling Stone has been in the listmaking game for a very long time, first publishing “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time” all the way back in 2003. But as we move into 2025, they’ve finally turned their editors loose on video games and published a new list of “The 50 Greatest Video Games of All Time“.

In creating their list, Rolling Stone decided to shy away from including dozens of sequels from the same franchise, and to ask how well the classics of yesteryear still hold up today:

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The Shacknews Hall of Fame’s Class of 2024 Finds Room for Super Smash Bros., Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, and 40 Other Games

The whole world is getting ready to close the book on 2024, which means that it’s also time to meet the newest inductees to the Shacknews Hall of Fame.

A total of 42 new games were added to the Hall of Fame this year, most coming from the great gaming year of 1999. The Shacknews Hall of Fame runs on a 25-year eligibility window and only games released on or before December 31, 1999 can be inducted.

So which games made the cut? The list includes multiple titles from Valve (Counter-Strike, Half-Life: Opposing Force, and Team Fortress Classic), Sega (Crazy Taxi, Samba de Amigo, Shining Force, and Sonic Adventure), and Nintendo (Mario Golf, Pokemon Gold and Silver, Pokemon Snap, Pokemon Stadium, and Super Smash Bros.). But Shacknews didn’t stop there, as they also enshrined Sqauresoft’s Final Fantasy VIII, Crystal Dynamics’s Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, Black Isle’s Planescape: Torment, Namco’s Soul Calibur, and Neversoft’s Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater.

All told, excluding duplicates, alternate editions, and expansion packs, the Shacknews Hall of Fame now includes 233 unique titles. And they haven’t even reached the first year of the new millennium yet!

All of the titles included in the Shacknews Hall of Fame’s Class of 2024 will be added to the Video Game Canon as part of next year’s update.

World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2024 Includes Asteroids, Myst, Resident Evil, SimCity, and Ultima

Once you see this year’s crop of inductees to the Strong Museum’s World Video Game Hall of Fame, you might be surprised that they didn’t get the call as part of an earlier vote. But less than four dozen titles have been selected to join this inner circle, so it’s also easy to see how some groundbreaking games could slip through the cracks.

And that’s where we are with the Hall of Fame’s Class of 2024, which welcomed Atari’s Asteroids, Cyan’s Myst, Capcom’s Resident Evil, Maxis’s SimCity, and Richard Garriott’s Ultima into the fold during a ceremony earlier today. It’s true… but I can hear the questioning tone in your voice.

Wasn’t Asteroids the game that solidified the space shooter as the dominant style of arcade game in 1979? Yup. Didn’t Richard Garriott practically invent the RPG with Ultima? He did. Wasn’t the CD-ROM-powered Myst more popular than any other PC game in the 1990s? You got that right. And aren’t Resident Evil and SimCity beloved classics that people continue to replay every year? That’s a big yes.

The curators and researchers at the Strong Museum also filled in some gaps and had a few nice things to say about each inductee.

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Here’s the Finalists for the World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2024

Spring is in the air, and that means it’s time for the curators at the World Video Game Hall of Fame to unveil this year’s ballot of possible inductees. The Class of 2024 will be the tenth to be welcomed into the Hall, and this year’s competition will include a grab bag of previous finalists and a eclectic slate of newcomers.

Leading the pack is a trio of two-time finalists, including Capcom’s Resident Evil (previously up for consideration in 2017 and 2022), Harmonix’s Guitar Hero (2020 and 2021), and Cyan’s Myst (2017 and 2019). All three have a strong case for induction, but they’ll be competing against a few other previous finalists, including Elite (which was a finalist in 2016), Asteroids (2018), and Metroid (2018).

But don’t count out the rookies, who come from some of gaming’s less-crowded corners. There’s a browser-based classic from the early 2000s (Neopets), the original city builder (SimCity), an early dating simulation (Tokimeki Memorial), a big name in extreme sports (Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater), Richard Garriott’s groundbreaking RPG (Ultima), and the chaotic trivia game that inspired the Jackbox franchise (You Don’t Know Jack).

“Even ten years in, there’s no shortage of deserving contenders that have had enormous influence on pop culture or the game industry itself,” said Jon-Paul Dyson, the Director of the Hall of Fame’s parent organization, the International Center for the History of Electronic Games at the Strong Museum. “These games span decades. Asteroids is an icon of the late 70s arcade. Myst showed the potential of CD-ROM technology in the 90s. Neopets became a staple of browser-based, free games as we entered the 2000s. And Guitar Hero, which is less than 20 years old, has already proven its staying power.”

As always, the World Video Game Hall of Fame is opening up the voting to the general public between now and March 21. Make your choice at WorldVideoGameHallOfFame.org, and the three games that receive the most votes will be submitted as a Player’s Choice ballot alongside the other ballots from the Hall of Fame’s International Selection Advisory Committee.

The World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2024 will be announced on Thursday, May 9, at 10:30 AM (Eastern Time). And if you’re unfamiliar with any of this year’s finalists, you can learn more about them after the break.

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1998’s Half-Life and Zelda: Ocarina of Time Lead the Way in the Shacknews Hall of Fame’s Class of 2023

It’s December, and that means the editors at Shacknews are back with yet another batch of inductees for the Shacknews Hall of Fame.

The Shacknews Hall of Fame operates on a 25-year eligibility window, so any game released before or during 1998 is eligible to be enshrined in the outlet’s pantheon of play. The Class of 2023 is the third group of games selected by the site’s editors, and with most of the obvious titles from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s already accounted for, the majority of this year’s inductees were originally released between January 1, 1998 and December 31, 1998 (though one selection, Mario Party, didn’t make it to the US until February 1999).

Among the 38 new additions to the Shacknews Hall of Fame are Half-Life and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the twin titans of 1998 that are perennially at the top of Best Games lists from across the decades. A lot of people have gone to bat for 2023 as one of the best years ever for games, but that sentiment was also in the air during 1998, and those two games are far from alone in the Class of 2023.

Heavy hitters such as Metal Gear Solid, Pokemon Red and Blue, Resident Evil 2, and StarCraft are well represented, as are fan favorites like Banjo-Kazooie, Final Fantasy Tactics, The House of the Dead, and Thief: The Dark Project.

Aside from all this flash and substance, the editors also found some well-deserved space for Nokia’s Snake in the Shacknews Hall of Fame.

All of the titles included in the Shacknews Hall of Fame’s Class of 2023 will be added to the Video Game Canon as part of next year’s update.

Tetris, Resident Evil 4, and Breath of the Wild Go 1-2-3 in the 2023 Update to the Video Game Canon’s Top 1000

This article refers to an older Version of the Video Game Canon. View the Top 1000 to see the most recent changes to the list.

It’s arriving a little later than usual, but the 2023 Update to the Video Game Canon (Version 7.0) is now available.

Four brand new Best Games lists are now included in the calculation, as well as a handful of older lists (including one from 1985). The four newly-published lists come from British GQ (“The 100 Greatest Video Games of All Time, Ranked by Experts“), Digital Trends (“The 50 Best Video Games of All Time“), Sports Illustrated/GLHF (“The Best 100 Games of All Time, Ranked“), and USA Today’s For the Win/GLHF (“The 100 Best Video Games of All Time“). Those last two lists appeared about six months apart, and though they share a similar pool of GLHF contributors, they’re fairly different.

Reaching back to 2016, I also added Gamereactor’s “Top 100 All Time Best Games” to the dataset, as well as “The Greatest Games: The 93 Best Computer Games of All Time,” a guidebook to the best games of all time by Dan Gutman and Shay Addams that was published by Compute! Books in 1985. It is, by far, the oldest list within the Video Game Canon, and a fascinating time capsule into what the conversation around games was like almost four decades ago (more than 60 games are unique to this list).

Finally, the Class of 2022 from the “Shacknews Hall of Fame” was added to the Video Game Canon as the site’s editors and contributors continued to expand their massive exploration of everything that’s great about video games.

So how did all of these additions affect the ranking of the Video Game Canon? As in most years, there were a lot of little changes and some very big swings in the standings.

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